Battle for Armageddon Expansion Set: Chaos Attack
Battle for Armageddon Expansion Set: Chaos Attack Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Advanced Rules
The following new rules can be added to Battle For Armageddon, but only if both players agree to them before the game starts. You may use some, none or all of the rules - it's up to you! Bear in mind that though the new rules add to the realism of the game, they also add to its complexity, increasing the time it will take to complete a game.
Accelerated Production
By pouring extra resources into the production of new units it is possible for the Imperial factories to produce new formations at a faster rate. To allow for this, the Imperial player may choose to place counters on the production track one or more spaces further to the right than they would normally go, at a cost of 1 extra reduction point for each space the counter is moved along the track.
For example, the Imperial player decides that he needs a new set of fortifications this turn. This means that he will have to move the counter two spaces to the right when he places it on the production track, so that it will move into the 'ready' box once all the new counters are on the track. To do this he must pay 2 points in addition to the 2 points the counter would cost in normal circumstances.
No Retreat!
Either player may choose to order his troops to stand and die rather than retreat. This is a costly strategy because your troops will suffer terrible casualties holding onto the ground. If you choose to take this option you may ignore instructions to retreat called for on the Combat Results table, but you must lose 1 extra counter from each stack that took part in the battle in addition to any losses normally suffered.
Variable Marine Arrival
Space Marines and Commander Dante had to wait for a warp storm to abate before they could travel to Armageddon. Neither side was sure how long the storm would last - it could have lifted much sooner than it did, or lasted for considerably longer. To recreate this uncertainty, the Imperial player should roll a D6 at the start of each turn, starting with the first. If the dice roll is equal or less than the turn number then the warp storm has lifted and the Space Marines can arrive on that turn.
Herman von Strab
For those Imperial players with a masochistic streak we have included a counter for the infamous Herman von Strab. He must be set up in Acheron hive at the start of the game by the Imperial player, and doesn't count for stacking. As you would expect, a number of special rules apply to von Strab:
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If von Strab is in a stack that is involved in a battle, either as the attacker or defender, there is a chance that he will perform a 'tactical withdrawal' before the battle is resolved. Roll a D6: on a roll of 1-3 von Strab immediately retreats 1 area, and takes the counter with the highest defence value in the stack with him as a bodyguard! On a roll of 4-6, or when retreat is impossible, von Strab will reluctantly stand and fight, and the combat is resolved using the normal rules.
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When Marine Commander Dante arrives (or Inquisitor Horst if Dante goes to Armageddon Prime) Strab is immediately relieved of command. Roll a D6: on a roll of 1-3 the counter is simply removed from play, but on a roll of 4-6 von Strab escapes and joins the Orks! Flip the counter over to its green side to show this and place it with the nearest stack of Orks.
Von Strab will no longer retreat before combat as described in rule 1 above, as he has no control over the Orks and must do as they tell him. However, the information he has on Imperial defences can prove very valuable to the Orks; so if he is included with a stack that is attacking a fortified area roll a D6 before the battle is resolved. On a roll of 1-3 von Strab has got his information wrong and the battle is resolved as normal, but on a roll of 4-6 the effect of the fortifications is negated by von Strab's information and any Imperial counters must defend with their normal defence values.
- If the von Strab counter is attacked while on its own, or if all of the counters that it is stacked with are eliminated in combat, then roll a D6. On a roll of 1-3 the counter is simply removed from play, while on a roll of 4-6 von Strab survives and joins the Orks as described above.
Once captured by the Orks von Strab is eliminated if he is attacked while on his own or if all of the counters he is stacked with are eliminated.
If the Imperial player uses the von Strab counter and the game ends in a draw, he can claim victory. This isn't quite as good as achieving the game's full victory conditions (killing Ghazghkull and recapturing all five hives), but it does go a long way towards compensating for having to put up with old Herman...
Game Variants
Battle For Armageddon recreates the situation exactly as it was in the original campaign. By using the following options you can explore the possibilities of what might have happened if things had been a little bit different.
New Special Cards
Eight new Special cards are included with Chaos Attack. Six of these are the Chaos Special cards, which are only used if you are playing the First Battle for Armageddon, described later in this rulebook. Put them to one side for the moment. The two remaining cards, one for the Imperial player and one for the Ork player, can be used when you are playing with the normal version of the game by simply shuffling them in with the Special cards provided with Battle For Armageddon.
Snakebite and Blood Axe Tribes
The counters provided for the Orks in Battle For Armageddon only show the tribes that took part in the campaign on Armageddon Secundus. In fact there were two other tribes present - the Blood Axes and the Snakebites, but they fought on Armageddon Prime to the north of the area shown on the game board.
We have included additional counters for these two tribes in Chaos Attack so that you can see what difference it would have made if they had fought on Armageddon Secundus instead. However, somebody will still have to fight the Imperial troops to the north, so you can only use these counters to substitute for counters you would normally use. The counters belonging to the two tribes not taking part in the campaign should be put to one side - they are considered to be battling away against Imperial forces on Armageddon Prime.
Free Imperial Set-Up
One of the main questions asked by Imperial historians is how well could the Imperial forces have done at the start of the campaign if they had not been subjected to the meddling of Herman von Strab. Many feel that if the fortifications that were built on the border had been constructed in and around the Imperial Hives then none of the hives would have fallen.
To find out what might have happened if von Strab hadn't interfered, simply ignore any instructions about where you must place Imperial counters at the start of the game. Instead, the counters may be set up anywhere in Imperial territory, subject to the rules for stacking. Note that this includes fortifications, border defence counters and hive defence counters - you may place any and all of the counters anywhere you like in Imperial territory! The only exceptions are hives and factories, which must be set-up as instructed on the reference sheet.
The Squats of Golgotha
Commander Dante and the three Space Marine Chapters were not the only force to arrive on Armageddon when the warp storm lifted. Inquisitor Horst and a contingent of Squat troops from the mining colony of Golgotha arrived at the same time, but were directed to Armageddon Prime to help with the defences there and so had no effect on the battle for Armageddon Secundus.
This could have happened the other way round, with the Squats landing on Armageddon Secundus while the Marines went to Armageddon Prime. The Imperial player may choose to take Inquisitor Horst and the Squat counters instead of Dante and the three Space Marine Chapters to recreate this possibility. If you choose to take this option the Squats and Inquisitor Horst enter play in the same way as Dante and the Space Marines.
Alternatively, the Imperial player may choose to take both sets of counters, effectively denuding Armageddon Prime of troops to help Armageddon Secundus. This is a risky strategy, because it will allow the Orks to pull troops from the fighting in the north to take part in the battle for Armageddon Secundus. If the Imperial player chooses to take both sets of counters, then the Ork player may use one of the tribes he put to one side at the start of the game as reinforcements. However, there is a good chance that the tribe will have suffered casualties in the fighting on Armageddon Prime, so the Ork player must roll a D6 for each counter in the tribe, and on a roll of 1-2 the counter has been eliminated in an earlier battle and may not be used. Any surviving Orks may be set up in the Ork Supply Areas on the edge of the board, subject to the rules for stacking, at the start of the turn following the one when the Squats and the Space Marines arrived.
Inquisitor Horst
Inquisitor Horst was one of the best guerilla fighters in the Imperium, and a number of special rules apply to him to represent his extra special abilities.
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If Horst is stacked with a smoking ruins counter during a build phase he can recruit freedom fighters from the human survivors hiding in the ruins. These freedom fighters are represented by a Hive Gang counter, which should be placed under Inquisitor Horst's counter. The Hive Gang counter is built for free and doesn't cost any build points. It can be selected freely from any that are available to the Imperial player.
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Horst was an expert at living off the land, so any counters that are stacked with him can ignore the supply rules.
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A stack that includes Horst is allowed to attempt to retreat before combat. You must declare that you will attempt to use this ability before the dice is rolled to resolve the combat. Roll a D6 to see if the stack manages to retreat. On a roll of 1-3 the stack must remain in place and the combat is resolved as normal. On a roll of 4-6 the stack manages to retreat and the combat is automatically treated as having a 'DW' result.
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Horst does not count for stacking and may not be used to satisfy combat losses when 'one unit must be eliminated'. He is killed if all of the counters with him are eliminated, or if he is attacked when on his own.
The First Battle for Armageddon
Using the New Counters and Cards
Using the counters provided with Chaos Attack you can re-fight the first battle for Armageddon and discover for yourselves what might have happened.
Chaos Attack includes a complete set of counters and cards for the forces of Chaos, and some new counters representing the Space Wolves, Wolf Lord Logan Grimnar and the Grey Knights.
The cards and counters for the forces of Chaos simply replace the Ork counters and cards used normally in Battle For Armageddon. At the start of the game the entire Chaotic army is set up in Ork - now Chaos - territory. Apart from the exceptions noted in the special rules below, all of the rules that normally apply to the Orks apply to the forces of Chaos.
Things are a bit more complicated on the Imperial side. The counters representing Commander Dante, Commissar Yarrick, the Iron Skulls Titan Legion and three Space Marine Chapters (Ultramarines, Blood Angels and Salamanders) provided with Battle For Armageddon are not used in this version of the game, so put them aside somewhere safe.
All of the other Imperial counters are set-up in exactly the same way as the instructions in Battle For Armageddon. In addition the Imperial player gets the three Space Wolf counters and Wolf Lord Logan at the start of the game, and may set up these counters anywhere in Imperial territory. The Grey Knights arrive as reinforcements as described in the special rules below. As with the Orks, apart from the exceptions noted in the special rules below, all of the rules that normally apply to the Imperial counters in Battle For Armageddon also apply in this version of the game.
Victory Conditions
The victory conditions for Chaos are the same as for the Orks: to capture and hold any three hives at the end of any turn. The Imperial player has almost the same victory conditions as before, except that he must eliminate Angron instead of Ghazghkull.
First Turn Surprise
The rules for surprise on the first turn of the game do not apply in this campaign as the Imperial forces are well prepared for the Chaotic invasion.
Advanced Rules and Game Variants
You may use any of the advanced rules from the book apart from the rules for Herman von Strab, as he won't be born for another 300 years! The game variant rules may not be used.
Angron, Daemon Primarch of the World Eaters
Any counters stacked with Angron have their attack and defence combat value doubled. Angron does not count for stacking, and may not be used to satisfy combat losses when 'one unit must be eliminated'. He is almost indestructible, and can only be killed by the Grey Knights (see below). If all of the counters with Angron are eliminated, or if he is attacked when he is on his own, then he must retreat one area. If he cannot retreat, move his counter to the nearest area that is occupied by Chaotic counters.
The Chaos Army
A Chaos army is a tremendously varied and colourful force. It is based around the Greater Daemons, who are accompanied by their followers - immortal daemons, daemon machines and warbands of mortal Chaos Champions. All kinds of mutated creatures flock to the warbands of a Chaos Champion, including humans, Beastmen, Trolls and Minotaurs. In addition a Chaos army can be joined by subversive Chaos Cultists; often Imperial Guard or local human forces who have turned rebel, or civilian cultists armed and uniformed in Imperial Guard fashion. Most of the units within a Chaotic army will worship one of the Chaotic powers. To represent this the Chaos counters are divided into four colours, one for each of the Four Chaos Powers (Khorne, Tzeentch, Nurgle and Slaanesh). Chaotic units worshipping different Chaotic gods are not allowed to stack or attack together, just like different Ork clans in Battle For Armageddon. The only exception to this is the Deaths Head Titan Legion, which is not allied to any one power and so can stack or attack with any other Chaotic unit.
Daemonic Hordes
Daemonic Horde counters represent the many strange daemonic creatures that can be found in a Chaos army. The effect that these creatures will have on a battle is highly variable, being dependent on the fickle and perverse nature of the Chaos Powers.
To represent this Daemonic Horde counters do not have a fixed attack and defence value. Instead, each time a daemonic horde is included in an attack, roll three dice and total the score to find the horde's attack value for that battle. If a daemonic horde is defending against an attack, roll a single dice to find its defence value. Note that you recalculate the horde's attack or defence value for each and every combat it is involved in.
The Space Wolves
After the Horus Heresy the Space Wolves were reorganised according to the Codex Astartes. However, their Primarch, the famous Leman Russ, was never conventional and the Chapter soon adapted to suit its leader's fierce warrior mentality.
The Space Wolves are renowned throughout the Imperium for their ferocity, and they have a far larger number of units equipped for close assault and hand to hand combat than the other Marine Chapters.
Most Space Marine Chapters have around a thousand Marines divided into ten companies. The Space Wolves are considerably larger, and are divided into twelve Great Companies each led by a Space Wolf chieftain called a Wolf Lord. Normally each Great Company will fight as an independent force, but in times of great danger two or more will combine to fight under the leadership of the Great Wolf, the master and ruler of all the Space Wolves.
Logan Grimnar
Logan Grimnar was Great Wolf at the time of the invasion of Armageddon. He ruled over his Chapter for over a century, and led the Space Wolves to many famous victories in campaigns all over the galaxy. If Logan is included with a stack taking part in an attack, you may reroll the dice if you don't like the result that you get on the Combat Results Table. You must accept the results of the reroll.
Logan does not count for stacking and may not be used to satisfy combat losses when 'one unit must be eliminated'. He is killed if all of the counters with him are eliminated, or if he is attacked when on his own.
The Grey Knights
The Grey Knights are one of the largest of the Space Marine Chapters but even so, they are too few to stand against the incursions of Chaos throughout the Imperium. When an Imperial Commander seeks aid in defeating Daemons or those irrevocably tainted by the warp, he must hope that the Grey Knights are near enough to arrive before it is too late.
To recreate the uncertainty about the arrival of the Grey Knights, the Imperial player does not automatically get the Grey Knight counter at the start of the game. Instead, at the end of each turn the Imperial player rolls a dice. If the dice roll is equal to or less than the turn number, the Grey Knights arrive on the planet and can be placed in any area on the map. The Grey Knights do not count against the stacking limit, and can be included in a stack even if there are already three counters in the area.
The Grey Knights' psychic powers make them extremely effective against Angron or the Daemonic Horde counters. If the Grey Knights are taking part in a combat, either on attack or defence, that includes a daemonic horde or Angron on the opposing side, roll a D6 for each daemonic counter. On a roll of 1-3 the daemonic counter is not affected and the combat is resolved as normal. On a roll of 4-6 the counter is hurled back to the warp by the psychic powers of the Grey Knights and is eliminated before the combat is resolved. This means the banished counter's combat value is not included when working out the odds ratio for the battle.
Armageddon Campaigns
Using Battle For Armageddon as a campaign system for Warhammer 40,000 and Space Marine games, this section of the rules provides guidelines for using Battle For Armageddon as a campaign system in this way.
Obviously you can't literally recreate the battles fought in the Armageddon campaign, as the forces involved were far too large to fit onto even the hugest war games table. However, what you can do is play tabletop games where the armies used are based on the forces that were used on the Armageddon map. Although the battle you fight on the tabletop will be much smaller than the battle it is meant to represent, it is assumed that it shows a small but vital part of the action, and that what happens on the tabletop is mirrored in hundreds of different places in the actual battle. Thus the result of your tabletop game can be used as the result for the battle in the board game.
In order to fight a campaign you'll need a copy of Battle For Armageddon and at least one Ork and one Imperial army. The armies can either be for Warhammer 40,000 or Space Marine (as long as they are both in the same scale, of course!) and they should be of roughly equal points value. Fighting out the battles in this way can create certain unique problems when you are playing a game. Most of these can be solved by using a little bit of common sense, or if this won't work, by rolling a dice to decide who is right or wrong.
What follows are the 'core' rules as we used in our campaign. They will not cover every situation that will occur when you play a campaign and they are not meant to! However, by using the rules a set of guidelines you shouldn't go too far wrong when you create special rules for your own campaign.
Armageddon Campaign Rules
Campaigns work best with a group of players. One player really needs to volunteer to be an umpire who will use the situations that develop in a game of Battle For Armageddon to create interesting and unique games and scenarios that are played out as tabletop games. The results of these games are then incorporated back into Battle For Armageddon, creating a narrative background that is only limited by the players' imaginations.
There is absolutely no reason why the umpire should have to do all the work on his own. One of the great things about a campaign is that anyone can chip in ideas for a scenario, and then rely on the umpire to create a balanced and exciting game. In fact, it's a good idea for players to take turns being the umpire, so that everyone gets a chance to take part in a battle. It is very important that the umpire remains completely neutral at all times!
Set up the Armageddon game as normal, but put it somewhere where you can leave it set up, as it will take several weeks to finish the campaign. All of the Armageddon rules apply, except those that apply to combat. This means that you choose strategy cards and special cards just like you normally would, move the counters across the board in the same way, and so on. In fact there is only one major change to the Armageddon rules, and that is:
Any battles that would normally be resolved on the Combat Results Table may be resolved on the tabletop as a Space Marine or Warhammer 40,000 game instead.
Instead of using the number of counters to determine the size of the armies, you will use the odds ratio that would be used on the Combat Results Table in Battle For Armageddon instead. At 1-1 odds both players have the same number of points to spend on their armies. At odds higher than 1-1 the player with the most points on the map receives a number of bonus points. This means that the size of the tabletop armies you use has nothing to do with the number of counters involved in the battle on the map. A battle involving one counter per side can be resolved with the same number of models as a battle between 10 counters, for example. [Printed as "10 or counters".]
We found that if the points were based directly on the odds ratio it produced very one-sided games, with one player getting twice as many points if he had 2-1 odds, for example, which isn't very realistic anyway. In reality the majority of troops will be behind the front line waiting to be used as reserves, while an outnumbered side can afford to have every man up front. So we decided that the player with the higher odds ratio would receive a points bonus of 20% at 2-1 odds, a bonus of 30% at 3-1 odds, a 40% bonus at 4-1 odds and so on.
The first thing to do is to decide how many points you will use in games that are fought at 1-1 odds. We decided to use 1,500 points in Warhammer 40,000 games, and double that amount in Epic games. In actual fact, the Studio armies are considerably larger than this, but we decided to limit the number of points so that the games would not take too long to play, and so that we would have enough spare troops to cover the bonus points that one side or the other might need if they outnumbered their opponent.
Just to make this all crystal clear we've printed the table we used in our Warhammer 40,000 games to determine the number of points the player with the higher odds ratio had in a game (the other player always has 1,500 points). Simply double up the points for Epic games.
| Odds | Points | Odds | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1-1 | 1500 | 5-1 | 2250 |
| 2-1 | 1800 | 6-1 | 2400 |
| 3-1 | 1950 | 7-1 | 2550 |
| 4-1 | 2100 |
As an optional rule you can decide to limit the forces used in the tabletop game to the counters taking part in the battle on the map. This requires a certain amount of common sense, as the counters used in the game represent very large formations that would include at least some elements from other army lists. None the less, it will give our tabletop games more character if you limit the forces that are available.
One way to do this is to limit the availability of models unless similar counters are taking part in the battle. For example, if you were playing a Space Marine game you might say that you cannot take a tank company card unless a tank division counter was involved in the battle. This won't stop you taking tank detachment cards of course, so you could include some tanks with your army even if a tank division counter was not there.
For example, let us say that a battle is taking place, but there are no tank divisions in the Imperial side. The Imperial player would only be allowed to field Baneblades, Shadow Swords, Storm Hammers, Leman Russ and Predators as detachments. He would not be allowed to use any of these vehicles in company strengths as there is no tank division taking part in the battle.
Ork armies can be made to suffer restrictions based on the clan of the tribe taking part along the similar lines. Although an Ork tribe includes members from all the different clans, it will be dominated by the clan belonging to its Warlord. To represent this you could say that you must include at least one unit from the tribe's main clan (shown on the back of the counter) in your army.
You can now proceed to choose your armies, set up the terrain and fight out the battle using the rules for whichever game system you are playing. You can use any system you like for setting up the terrain, though it will make your games more interesting if you take into account the terrain where the battle is taking place on the map when you do so. For example, if one side were defending a hive you might say that buildings should cover at least half of the table.
One situation that occurs frequently during the campaign are battles that take place over a river line. Rivers provide a -1 modifier to the attacker's dice roll in the Armageddon rules, so their effect really should be recreated in any tabletop battles. What we did was allow the defender to position a river after all the other terrain had been set up, and after the defender knew which table edge he was setting up on. However, the river had to include at least 1 bridge and 1 D6 other fording points. This gave the defender the chance of placing the river in a useful position while ensuring that the attacker could get across at several points along its length.
Fortifications are also encountered in the Armageddon campaign, and are certainly worth including in a tabletop game. If you are playing a Space Marine game you can simply use the special scenario that we printed in White Dwarf 144. Incorporating fortifications into Warhammer 40,000 requires a bit more work, but if you use the Space Marine article as a guideline then you shouldn't have too much trouble.
Having set up the terrain you can finally get down to fighting the battle. In a campaign game it is important to come up with a clear result, so that you have a winner and loser and can easily apply the results of the battle back on the Armageddon map. This is straightforward in a Space Marine game, as it has its own set of victory conditions, but it can be a problem in a Warhammer 40,000 game.
There are two ways round this: either the umpire can create a 'one-off' set of victory conditions for each Warhammer 40,000 game, or you can use a modified version of the victory conditions from Space Marine. In order to use the second option you'll need to borrow the eight objective counters from Space Marine and place them down on the table about 10-12" apart. The side that manages to reduce the opposing army to half strength and be in possession of at least five of these objectives at the end of any turn is the winner.
We ended up using both systems; fighting a scenario if the position on the map was interesting enough, and using the objective system for more straight-forward battles. Whichever system you use, you should stop the game as soon as one side wins the battle by achieving the game's victory conditions. There is no need to continue the battle to the bitter end, as it is assumed that the defeated side will quickly fall back and disengage from the enemy once it has been defeated.
After you've fought out the battle you need to determine what effect the result has on the Armageddon map. We decided that if a player lost over a third of his army as casualties during the game then he had to lose 1 counter from each stack that took part in the battle. In addition, the loser of the battle had to remove one counter from each stack taking part, no matter what losses he suffered on the tabletop. This is summarised on the table below.
| Losses Suffered on Tabletop | Losses Suffered on Map |
|---|---|
| Less than 33% | None. |
| More than 33% | Lose 1 counter from each stack taking part in the battle. |
| Lost the game | Lose 1 extra counter per stack. |
If the defender lost the battle any surviving counters must retreat one area on the Armageddon map, and up to three attacking units may advance into the vacated area. Only the defender is ever forced to retreat in this way. If the attacker loses then his counters simply remain in place.
Expanding the Campaign
The rules presented above will provide you with a perfectly adequate campaign, but they should really only be used as a starting point rather than an end in themselves. Remember that the games that you play don't have to have a direct effect on the Battle For Armageddon game itself.
Of course, you don't have to fight out every single battle as a tabletop game; you can always use the Combat Results Table provided with Battle For Armageddon instead. Using the Combat Results Table is especially useful for very one-sided battles (ie at odds of 5-1 or more), or if there are a lot of battles to resolve in a turn and you don't want the campaign to become bogged down.
As you can see, there are many ways that you can use Battle For Armageddon other than as a simple board wargame. Used creatively it can provide the basis for exciting scenarios for all of the games that are set in the Warhammer universe. Have fun!